Diabetes patients that inject insulin have to check their blood glucose value and carry out insulin injections, sometimes several times every day. They also need to log their blood glucose values and register the amount of insulin that has been injected in order to monitor the disease. Today this requires several different devices: means for testing blood glucose including means for taking a blood sample (such as a lancet), disposable test strips and a blood glucose meter; an insulin injection device, extra insulin cartridges, replacement needles and also a log book and writing utensils for registering blood glucose values and injections. The diabetic patient has to carry all these items with him or her, which is not only a hassle but also a risk for the patient, since losing equipment puts him or her at danger, since proper treatment is then perhaps not achieved.
The amount of insulin that the patients injects is based on the blood glucose measurements. Injection of an incorrect amount of insulin is dangerous to the patient. Therefore it is important that this procedure is carried out in a correct and safe manner.
Furthermore, since it is very important that the patient actually treats him or herself it is desirable that self-medication causes minimal inconvenience for the patient and affect the patient's life style as little as possible.
In order to solve this problem there has been developed devices that integrates all these functionalities, for example WO2009027950 which describes a portable medical device that integrates blood glucose measurement and insulin injection. It has a lancet for obtaining a blood sample. The lancet, and the injections means are placed on the same end of an elongated housing in order to avoid blood splashing getting in touch with mechanical movable parts and/or electronic parts inside the housing.
The site http://www.brightercompany.com/product-information as visited on Nov. 6, 2013 has a film that discloses a medical device. It has a test strip port located adjacent and such that the test strip is parallel to the injection needle. It has one display that shows both blood glucose concentration and the amount of insulin to be injected by the device.
The diabetes patient is used to carry out the different steps of blood glucose measurement and insulin injection in a certain order and in a certain manner. This contributes to that the patient carries out the procedure in a safe manner. This is particularly important since the cognitive abilities of diabetes patients may sometimes be compromised due to fluctuating blood glucose levels.
There is also a need for improved logging of injections. Currently registration of blood glucose measurement are usually carried out manually by the patient. Manual registrations are prone to human errors, for example the patient may forget to register a value or enters the wrong value. Automatic logs have been proposed, for example in WO2012068214.
Before each injection it is important that the user primes the injection needle, in order to ensure that there are no air bubbles and no clogs in the needle. This is carried out by ejecting a small amount of medication from the needle. A disadvantage with current automatic logs is that they cannot distinguish between injection events and priming events. WO 2009083600 proposes a medical device that can log insulin injections and distinguish between injections events and priming events depending on the speed of the ejected liquid during ejection. However, that invention assumes that the ejection speed is controlled by the device. In devices where the injection speed varies, for example because the user pushes a plunger with different speed from time to time, such a solution cannot be used.
Thus, there is a need for improved log that can distinguish between injection events and priming events in safe and convenient manner.